Postless

Lack of posting recently because last week I went and visited my college roommate in Wilmington, N.C. It was a very relaxing four days that included all the things I have to get when I go to N.C./The beach.

1) N.C.-style Bar-B-Que – vinegar-based, spicy and tangy with hush puppies, fried okra and red slaw (I didn’t get any red slaw this trip but subbed in some excellent potato salad) We went to a place called Jackson’s Big Oak. I highly recommend it. It’s exactly what I look for in a BBQ joint. 

2) Bojangles – If I really really want to I can get Jenna to drive me to Maryland for some Bojos, but it’s a must any time I head back. For any of you who don’t know, Bojangles is a southern chicken and biscuits chain restaurant. 

3)Flaming Amy’s - This one is Wilmington-specific. Best burrito joint I’ve ever had the pleasure of patronizing. Yes, it’s better than Chipotle.  Carrburritos in Carrboro, N.C., is way up there as well, but Carrburritos only has Mexican-style offerings, whereas Flaming Amy’s has any kind of combination you can imagine and a salsa bar. The pineapple-jalepeno salsa is a personal favorite. If I were getting Mexican-style, it would be a much tougher decision. 

4) Cheerwine – A cherry-flavored soft drink that’s available lots of places in the south, but mainly N.C. and S.C. It also originated in my hometown, Salisbury, and is still based there. I worked for those guys for a couple  of summers.  

5) A “real” beach – That’s what I call the beach in Carolina. It’s one where you can walk for miles if you want and not have to worry about running into private sections of coastline. Also one where everyone in town is wearing shorts and flip flops and the “shirt and shoes required” sign isn’t enforced. You can drive your boat to a restaurant and your bike anywhere because it’s so flat. There aren’t attractions like mini-golf and water parks, just the beach, and that’s all you need. 

Didn’t mean to get all preachy on that one. There’s just nothing like going to the beach for me. 

If I had gone home to “tha Bury” I would have gone to Hap’s Grill. It’s another one of those “best” places that no place on Earth will ever compare to for me. It’s solely hot dogs and hamburgers, and the way to get them is “all the way,” which include chili, onions and mustard. I get cheese as well. 

………..great. Now all I can think about is how much I want to get back.

Madness I say

Discussion of all other topics besides Tar Heel basketball is now banned from the wom until further notice…OK maybe not ALL. This is not to say I won’t talk about something else, but that I’ll try to work in something about the Heels into every post for the next two weeks.

Anyway, after a weekend in which my bracket might as well be torn to shreds, the Heels did not fall victim to upset despite some hairy moments in the LSU game in the second round. Thank God Ty Lawson is back.

The wom’s upset picks were so close I could smell the office pool jackpot, but now those picks are putting me in the middle-lower part of the pack. Here was my downfall:

Arizona:  While Arizona probably has better talent than Utah State,  I figured their poor finish in the regular season would carry over and had them losing in the first round. Said poor finish did not carry over, and they are now in the Sweet 16, robbing me of two bracket wins.

Cleveland State: They got me good. Not only did I have them losing to Wake in the first round, but I had Wake in the Final Four. It wasn’t even close. The Rams dominated the Demon Deacons

Southern Cal: I had the Trojans over Maryland, but also had them beating Michigan State. They lost a nail-biter, eventually by five points, after leading for most of the game. Thanks, guys.

Utah State: Without Dominic James, I had planned for the Marquette Golden Eagles to fall in the first round, to no avail. Utah State lost by one. Another round of thank-yous.

Florida State: The team that beat UNC in the ACC tourney. I had them in the Sweet 16 on grounds they would eat up Wisconsin from the what-I-thought-was-a-weak Big 10 and then do similarly over Xavier, who plays in the somewhat good A10. Nope. ‘Noles lose to Badgers by two. Another two victories I won’t see.

VCU: This was the great pick! I mean c’mon. UCLA, who had not looked that good and was coming out of the unconvincing Pac-10, against a well-coached VCU team with the same star guard, Eric Maynor, that beat Duke two years ago? I filled it in right away – VCU over UCLA. VCU goes down by one.

Western Kentucky: A very similar team, with many of the same players, to last year’s Sweet 16 team. I was definitely taking them over Illinois, which they did accomplish, and tried to flex superior knowledge and pick them over Gonzaga as well. One last-second layup later, they were bounced by two points. Great D on that last play Hilltoppers. Y’all WERE my boys!

 

Clemson: Oh, this one’s the best. Given I see them play in the ACC fairly often, I was going to give them the benefit of a doubt this year. Finally, Clemson was going to pull it out and perform decently in the Big Dance. Similar to the way I predicted Fla. State, I had Clemson in the Sweet 16, upsetting Oklahoma no less. Guess the Tigers will just have to wail til next year. They didn’t get out of the first round.

So by a combined 11 points (with five of those from one game), I lost out on six games that I picked in my brackets, the games those picks actually lost and any future-round games that I might have had them winning. So as far as the office pool(s) [I'm in two] I guess I’ll be waiting til next March like most of the teams in this post.

One pick is still intact though, mostly becaus they now have the ACC’s all-time leading scorer on their team, Tyler Hansbrough. Suck it, JJ!

HEELS ALL THE WAY!

March Madness Bracket

Haven’t take any extreme time to examine the NCAA tournament bracket, but here’s my first impressions after watching the selection show.

Louisville got shafted. They have by far the toughest bracket.
Pitt and UConn got a nice path laid out for them. Duke and Memphis are the weaker No. 2 seeds in my opinion.
UNC has its work cut out for it. OU, ‘Cuse and Gonzaga is a fairly tough draw, though they would only potentially have to face either OU or ‘Cuse in the Elite 8 because both are on the bottom half of the region.

ACC is getting represented well. It tied the Big East for tourney selections with Maryland sneaking in there. 

It’s gonna be a great month. 

Let the madness begin!

Tar Heels Outlast Hokies

 79-76

WHEW!

UNC’s opening round ACC tournament game was not the type to try and sit quietly and watch on your computer at work. But thanks to Raycom, the local N.C. sports netowrk, I was able to do so for this close one.

Playing without Lawson, it was easy for many to predict this would be a tough game. Va. Tech ain’t bad. And anytime you play without the conference playerof the year it’s going to be a different ballgame

I was fighting urges to slam my monitor into the cubicle wall for the first half and decided it’d be better to go out for my lunch break for the second. I went to Timberlake’s, a bar on Conn. Ave. near work, and was thwarted in my attempts by the odd fact that they did not get ESPN2. On channel 8 instead was ESPN News. Strange, but nonetheless unacceptable. A coworker and I moved to Buca di Beppo ,which is a chain Italian restaurant in the same building as my office.

Finally the cheers could fly, and it turned out the only other people eating at the bar at 1 p.m. were Hokies fans. Excellent.

Psycho’s back, baby! Hansbrough played tough and got really into the game, pumping his fists on that last jumpball call and cheering hard on his way to the locker room. If the team starts to feed off his energy it will be really fun to watch.

I havent’ yet checked in on the Ty Law situation, but I can see him sitting out another game. Of course I’d be much happier if he were back to the floor tomorrow, but there is a bigger prize than the ACC tournament on the horizon after all.

Overall, today was a gutsy, great win against a tough team that was fighting for its postseason life. If Maryland wins again today, they would probably have a better change of making the Big Dance than Va. Tech, but strange things always seem to happen so the Hokies should probably at least watch the selection show — albeit with low expectations.

Considering Carolina never led by more than three, I thought it showed that the team is ready to be challenged on the road to the Final Four. At times this season I’ve questioned their motivation and hussle, but today was different. They never lost sight of the win, even in this game that was not a must win for the NCAA title. Having probably safely secured a No. 1 seed, UNC could have let this one go, rested up and gotten healthy for next weekend, but where would the fun in that be?

Let’s Go HEELS!

Three-day Vay Cay

The general lack of posting can be attributed to the fact that some good friends of mine paid me a visit over the weekend. We started off the festivities with the UNC/Maryland game in College Park on Saturday. It had been really hard to score the tickets, and apparently it wasn’t so hard to score on Carolina. In what for many of us was the first time we had gotten to see the Heels live this season, we watched a 16-point lead dwindle to force OT, and then saw our boys collapse in extra time.

Now there are a great many things that went wrong, a couple of debatable coaching decisions regarding some timeouts and our defensive effort and mindset, but c’mon guys, I came to see you! I wish we would have pulled out the win, but it was nice to see the team playing. When they actually were playing well, they looked good. There is a definite air of confidence that you can see in them when they’re rolling, but once that confidence gets broken, they look like any other team. Maybe it takes a dramatic situation, like the Duke rivalry (and hopefully the ACC and NCAA tourneys), that makes this team take on pressure and come back. It’s been these past few games against so-so ACC teams that have really been bothersome. Letting teams like N.C. State and Miami make runs on us isn’t good for our psyche. We need to develop a killer instinct and just put teams away down the stretch, not fall asleep and let them inch back into the game. Anyway, I’m over it. If I feel up to the task I might post up some pictures from the game as we scored some nice lower level seats in the Comcast Center.

The rest of the weekend was a success.

We effectively “raged” at Front Page in Dupont Saturday night, needing to drink away our sorrows from the afternoon. It’s typically not one of my favorite bars, actually it never is, but it was the best time I’ve had out in quite a few weeks. There was much dancing and  merry making.

Sunday was more or less a recovery day. We ate brunch at Cafe Luna. The eggs benedict were outstanding and very affordable. This was my second brunch experience there and it pretty much cemented Luna as my go-to place for breakfast on the weekends. It helps that it’s two blocks from my house as well. Sunday afternoon we took a tour of the monuments around and between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Didn’t make it over to the Jefferson.

Sunday evening/night was fun because after we had some grub at RFD, we went back to my place and had a session until sometime close to 3 a.m. I felt Lew Bryson would have been proud. No drunks this night. Just friends staying up to the wee hours talking.

Monday I took off from work to spend time with my visitors and two of us made a trip to the newly renovated American History Museum. The rest of the night consisted of enjoying a few choice beers and a Mos Def concert at 9:30 Club.

I cracked that bomber of Stone Old Guardian that I mentioned in a previous post. Wow! A really hefty barleywine with a very mellowed bite. This is perhaps because the bottle has been aged a year on the shelves of Cairo Liquor.

We made it to the show in time for some approximately third row seats that were great – once Mos finally made it. We had to wait two hours for him to arrive, pushing the 7:30 start time to 9:30 p.m., guess that’s how the place got its name.  Good thing they have Old Rasputin on tap at the club, one of the reasons it has to be the best place in the city to see a show.

For all the waiting we had to do, Mos didn’t disapoint the sold-out crowd. He was on from the start and played a great set list of some classics and some new stuff. He did a two-song Black Star medley in which he rapped the Talib Kweli verses, nice. My roommate attended the added late show, which didn’t start until 12:30 a.m., and said that it was just as much talking as singing and rapping. I really had a great time at our show (except for the wait), so I’m glad I went to the early show.

Annnnnnnnd back at work on Tuesday. Nice three-day vacation, though.